Lord Herechell made at Newcastle-on-Tyne yesterday week, one of those
singularly moderate and fair speeches in defence of Home-rule which always make us speculate as to the course events might have taken if the movement had been guided less by Mr. Gladstone's enthusiasm and more by Lord Herschell's sobriety. Probably the result would have been that the English Home-rule Party would in that case have been so utterly out- raged by the proceedings of the Irish Home-rule Party, that a split would have occurred between the two, and that the Irish Home-rulers would have rejected and even spurned their English allies. Lord Herschell's chief point was that the con- dition of Ireland and England is so different, that you cannot really provide for both by the agency of the same Legisla- ture without greatly endangering either the character of the Irish or the character of the English legislation. For eighty years the experiment of the Union had been, he considered, a failure in conciliating the Irish people, and it was, in his opinion, most important to concede what would convert Ireland from a hostile to a friendly attitude. That is all very reasonable, if any one knew what would do so without producing a much worse ultimate alienation than now exists,—an Ireland armed with great powers to be actively troublesome, and then forcibly disarmed of those powers, and therefore made more deeply resentful than ever.
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